Lucky Day

1. Lucky Day

There he sat, on the roof of his 6 story apartment building, contemplating what his first 35 years of life had brought him. He was trying to think of anything even close to important that he had contributed to the world. Though he sat for hours, not a single memory popped into his head. He knew that he wasn't going to think of anything, he was just hoping, wishing that he would. Standing from his cheap lawn chair perched so that he could look over the city that wouldn't miss him, he climbed onto the ledge of the building. He contemplated his life, his actions, his absolute uselessness that had lead up to this point. Then, he took the final step to oblivion. However, just as he was leaning over the edge of the building, his right hand got caught. Someone had been watching him, and the watcher had caught the man just before his eternal slumber. "It doesn't have to end like this, you know." The watcher pulled the man back to the ledge of the building. "You still have plenty of time to turn your life around." The watcher motioned for the man to follow him. "I am going to help you turn your life around. You deserve better than to die useless. Everyone deserves better than to die useless." They slowly walked down the stairs to the entrance of the apartment building together.

The man slipped into the watcher's waiting limousine, as he was dazed from his attempt to end his life. The watcher entered on the other side. They began to travel to the man's new life.

On the way there, the man finally snapped out of his daze. "Where... What... What happened? Where are you taking me?" The man wasn't particularly worried, but he was extremely disoriented from the recent turn of events.

"We are going to change your life." stated the watcher. "I will see to it that you wont die useless."

The man and the watcher pulled in to the driveway of a moderately sized house, built in a small rural town. The house had an eerie feel to it, but not so much that it was foreboding. It just seemed like an old house in the middle of nowhere, which it was. Once inside, the watcher lead the man around the back of the house to what appeared to be cellar doors.

The watcher went in first, as if to show the man that there were no traps or tricks involved in his decent to the basement. The man followed a short distance from the watcher, wary of anything the watcher might do to trap him in this dark room. To his relief, the watcher promptly switched on a light in the basement, illuminating the bed, shelves, private bathroom, and basically everything you might see in an apartment. In fact, it seemed quite reminiscent of the man's old apartment.

"I hope you don't mind the relocation." The watcher turned to face the man. "Considering you wouldn't be living anywhere anymore if it weren't for my intervention, I doubt you care if you live somewhere else for awhile. Being taken away by a stranger is much preferable to loved ones than being taken away in a body bag. Speaking of loved ones, I don't mean to cut you off from your old life. Would you care to call anyone and tell them where you are?" If the man had anyone who loved him left, he would've thought twice before taking that last step.

"My parents died together in a plane crash about 8 years ago, and my brother died a month ago in a bar fight. I was unemployed, and owed a couple months of rent to my landlord. I won't be calling anyone." The man laid down in the bed, exhausted from his mind's attempt to find the meaning in his life.

"Sleep tight, tomorrow we're going to change the world... you're going to change the world..." With that, the watcher shut off the light and left the man with his thoughts.

Two weeks later, the man and the watcher were in the house, hard at work. "Just a bit more." The watcher grunted with effort. "There... finally. Heh, it took two weeks, but we're finally done." The man held up the fruit of their labor: something that looked like a tube for a vacuum cleaner, about the length of a leg, with a little screw on the side. "We have just made the lives of millions better, and we couldn't have done it without you. Imagine what would've been lost with you all over the pavement." The man grinned widely. All it really was was a tube that attached to the back of people's legs. They were very flexible when a person would bend it around, but the tube was stronger than steel if you tried to compress it. There were also hand controls that attached to the side, allowing people who couldn't move their legs for any reason whatsoever to operate the tube supports too. They had made a way to make the legless to walk.

Two months later, the man and the watcher were watching television together in their new house in Maine. It was right at the coast, so many windows overlooked the sea. Together, they watched news stories made about their invention, about war heroes who took their first steps in decades because of this device, of car crash victims who were able to maintain their daily routine because of this device. The man had truly changed the world, and he owed it all to the watcher.

Fifty years later, the man sat in a hospital room with his friend, the watcher. The watcher took the man's hand as the end neared. The man reflected on his life, on how many people he had helped, on how much he changed the world for the better. A wide grin was on his face as his heart accepted life's inevitable conclusion. The watcher stood from his seat at the man's bedside, and slowly walked out of the room.

At 8:27 PM on May 12th, 2013, Johnathan Xavier Halburrow died due to an injury inflicted from falling off of a 6 story apartment building. He had no loved ones, no will, no job, and owed numerous debts. All of his few belongings were sold at auction to settle his debts, and John was buried in the closest cemetery to the building he died at. When paramedics reached the premises to retrieve the body, they saw that John had a smile on his face. When they went to the rooftop to look for any sign of a struggle, to make sure this was suicide and not murder, they found no such signs. All they found was a suicide note, which read "I have changed the world. From heaven I will watch it change. All because of me." It was signed with "The watcher."